Conferences, symposia, and workshops can be sponsored or co-sponsored by SIGMOD, or held in cooperation with SIGMOD. In addition to all the benefits that derive from SIGMOD in-cooperation status, meetings sponsored by SIGMOD enjoy financial security. Further, organizers of sponsored meetings can ask the SIGMOD Executive Committee to have their proceedings published in the SIGMOD Record. The requirements for SIGMOD sponsorship and directions for applying for SIGMOD sponsorship are given below. Note that meetings held in conjunction with the ACM SIGMOD/PODS joint conference face additional requirements.
When SIGMOD sponsors a meeting, it takes responsibility for the meeting and the site selection, including financial responsibility. In order to ensure an open, high quality meeting and avoid financial risks, both ACM and SIGMOD have certain requirements. First, the meeting must satisfy all the requirements for meetings that are offered in cooperation with SIGMOD. Second, the following additional requirements must be met.
- The conference organizers must budget the meeting according to ACM’s sponsorship rules, which include filling out a standard budget form. A certain percentage of conference income must be budgeted for ACM’s administrative services, such as providing help, information, publicity, mailing lists, and producing a proceedings.
- SIGMOD requires a close working relationship with the organizers of the meetings it sponsors. This means that critical decisions have to be approved by the SIGMOD Executive Committee, including the selection of the program chair, the selection of program committee members, and the budget. SIGMOD expects all of its sponsored conferences to break even financially. The regularly scheduled conferences that SIGMOD sponsors are either organized directly by the SIGMOD Executive Committee or have a steering committee that reports to the SIGMOD Executive Committee.
The approval process for SIGMOD sponsorship has two phases: informal approval by SIGMOD’s volunteer leadership, and formal approval from ACM. To apply for SIGMOD sponsorship, start by sending a request for sponsorship to the SIGMOD Chair and Vice Chair at least 11 months before the conference is to take place. The request should include all the information required for a request for in-cooperation status, plus a list of other available financial resources, such as other sponsorships and grants.
The request will be circulated to a designated subset of the SIGMOD Executive Committee. A response to the request is usually given within two weeks. If the Executive Committee gives tentative approval to the request, the next step is for the meeting organizers to fill out a Technical Meeting Request Form (TMRF) for a sponsored meeting. The TMRF must be signed and returned by postal mail to ACM headquarters, along with a signed letter from the proceedings publisher that gives permission for the meeting’s proceedings to be included on the SIGMOD DiSC. After ACM approves the meeting’s TMRF, SIGMOD can give official approval of sponsorship. To aid in early preparations for regularly offered meetings, ACM also offers a procedure to obtain official preliminary approval of the meeting. Full details on ACM’s approval process, along with guidelines for filling out the TMRF, and other useful information for conference organizers, can be found on line in ACM’s SIG Conference Manual.